The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border eBook

Cracking an order at them in his best garbled Spanish,
Bob clambered into the pilot’s seat. He
was understood, and better, was obeyed. One man
gingerly approached the propeller and started twirling
it, while the other went to the side of the plane
and helped push it forward.

The propeller began to whirl furiously as Bob worked
the starting mechanism. The Mexicans leaped out
of the way. The plane began to bump ahead.

Shouts of anger burst forth at the same moment, there
was the crack of a rifle, and a bullet sang unpleasantly
close to Bob’s ears. Out of the tail of
his eye he could see a number of dark figures running
toward him from the grove.

But Bob did not wait to be interviewed. With
a swoop, the airplane left the ground and started
upward. His pursuers were so close at hand they
could almost grasp the wheels, as they leaped upward.
Yet not quite. Bullets whistled about him, and
several pinged against the body of the machine with
a sharp metallic ring. Bob thanked his stars
that the plane had an all-metal body. Once above
pursuit, he was safe from stray rifle shots.

With a curse the baffled Muller, who had been quick
to realize that if one masquerader was not Morales,
then the other was not Von Arnheim, watched the airplane
shoot away at dizzying speed and disappear beyond
the guarding hills to the north.

Then he turned back toward the ranch house, eager
to learn how the pursuit of Jack had ended.

But for young Herr Muller and the Calomares ranch
in general the night alarms were not ended. In
fact, they had just begun.

Before Muller on his return trip had reached the belt
of trees, while the search for Jack, who had mysteriously
disappeared, went on merrily within the Calomares
palace, and while Bob was yet flying over the hills
to the north, rebel pickets below him were attacked
by Mexican government troops.

It was an attack in force.

“Viva, Obregon,” shouted the attackers.

The rebels on the northern rampart of hills defending
the natural amphitheatre where the Calomares ranch
was located, fell back hurriedly. They were outnumbered.

Out of the huddled buildings, which the boys had only
glimpsed at the rear of the great ranch house boiled
scores of rebel soldiery, rubbing the sleep from their
eyes, hugging their rifles as they trotted forward
in bare feet. Within the house, the search for
Jack was temporarily abandoned, while the peppery
little Don Fernandez Calomares, alarmed at this night
attack which might mean that the government troops
were in force, hastened to take command outdoors.

To Bob, who having crossed the crest of the hill had
shut off his motor and volplaning, the shots and cries
of the attackers came distinctly. He had intended
making a hazardous landing beyond the rebel lines
and returning afoot to try and rescue Jack. But
this newest development in the situation caused him
to open the motor and start to spiralling upward.